Activists glue themselves to Goya paintings in Spanish climate protest

MADRID — Climate activists glued their hands to the frames of two world-famous paintings by Spanish master Francisco de Goya in Madrid’s Prado museum on Saturday, the latest in a string of protests targeting artworks across Europe.

A man and a woman attached themselves to Goya’s La Maja Vestida (The Clothed Maja) and his La Maja Desnuda (The Naked Maja), and painted “+1.5 C” on the wall between the two works, video footage showed.

Campaign group Futuro Vegetal said its members carried out the protest.

“Last week the UN recognized the impossibility of keeping us below the limit of 1.5 Celsius (set in the 2016 Paris climate agreement). We need change now,” it wrote on Twitter.

Groups of climate activists have mounted a series of similar protests in recent weeks in the build-up to the COP27 climate change conference in Egypt.

Protesters tried to glue themselves to the glass covering Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in The Hague and others threw soup over Van Gogh’s The Sower in Rome and one of his Sunflowers paintings in London. Both of those works were also covered.

The Prado said its paintings, created at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, had not been damaged, and the graffiti on the wall was quickly painted over.

“We condemn the use of the museum as a place to make a political protest of any kind,” the gallery added.

Police said two people had been arrested. — Reuters